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Aides to Barack Obama are putting the squeeze on Democratic officials, urging them to get aboard the campaign “sooner rather than later,” The Post has learned.

Obama supporters have also approached members of Congress and state legislators who face re-election and argued they stand a better chance with Obama heading the ticket than with Hillary Rodham Clinton, sources said.

One Clinton supporter said Obama’s quest goes beyond the battle for “superdelegates,” party big shots who serve as delegates at the Democratic convention. His campaign has reportedly begun reaching out to lower party officials in an effort to put an end to the divisive primary battle.

The message is that “we want to end this sooner rather than later” to bring unity to the party and stand a better chance of beating likely Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, said one lawmaker who supports Clinton.

The lawmaker said he hadn’t been directly approached but knew several elected officials who had. Obama supporters also say their candidate is pulling in stronger support from diverse groups than Clinton is, the source said.

Obama supporters also contend the New York senator has high polling negatives, so Democrats running for federal, state and city offices also have a better chance of winning re-election if Obama heads the ticket.

An Obama spokesman said the campaign doesn’t respond to speculation from unnamed sources.

But a city official in the key primary state of Ohio said it was clear “the Obama campaign is really accelerating.”

He added that there was a lot of “aggressive electioneering.”

Another Ohio lawmaker said he’d heard that some African-American leaders in Ohio had been given a message.

Campaign officials “have very much dumped on them that it’s an either-or choice,” the official said.

Heading into the critical March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio, the Obama and Clinton campaigns remain locked in a heated battle, with both competing for every possible delegate.

Obama leads with 1,374 delegates, and Clinton has 1,275, according to Realclearpolitics.com. It will take 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Obama picked up more than two dozen superdelegates over the last two weeks, it was revealed Friday.

A political strategist unaffiliated with either campaign said it was no surprise that Obama’s people would try to expand the Illinois senator’s base of support.

“Any campaign would be doing the same thing in that position,” he said. “Such things happen all the time. Supporters try to call and actively court people, whether for Barack Obama or John McCain or anyone else.”